Last updated on June 17, 2013 by Dan Nanni
Suppose you are trying to install a specific deb package, but want to know what files are contained in the package before actual installation. Or imagine that you are not sure what package owns a specific program binary or library you need.
In these cases, it will be useful if you can check the content of a specific deb package before installation. This article tells you how to do it.
In Ubuntu or Debian, there are two ways to show all files contained in a particular deb package without installing it.
apt-file
The first method is to use apt-file
command-line tool.
To install and use apt-file
on Ubuntu or Debian, do the following.
$ sudo apt-get install apt-file $ sudo apt-file update
Note that you need to run "apt-file update
" at first, in order to synchronize all available package contents from their sources.
Then to show files belonging to a specific deb package (e.g., tofrodos
), simply run:
$ sudo apt-file show tofrodos
tofrodos: /usr/bin/fromdos tofrodos: /usr/bin/todos tofrodos: /usr/share/doc/tofrodos/NEWS.Debian.gz tofrodos: /usr/share/doc/tofrodos/changelog.Debian.gz tofrodos: /usr/share/doc/tofrodos/copyright tofrodos: /usr/share/doc/tofrodos/readme.txt.gz tofrodos: /usr/share/doc/tofrodos/tofrodos.html tofrodos: /usr/share/man/man1/fromdos.1.gz tofrodos: /usr/share/man/man1/todos.1.gzThe output will show the names of all contained files, along with their respective target installation directories.
apt-get
The second method to show files in a Debian package is to use apt-get
command, but with --download-only
option.
$ apt-get --download-only install tofrodos
Once you run the above command, a deb package called tofrodos
will get downloaded to /var/cache/apt/archives
, but will not be installed.
Then you can use dpkg
command to list contents of the locally downloaded deb package.
$ dpkg -c /var/cache/apt/archives/tofrodos_1.7.9.debian.1-1build1_amd64.deb
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/man/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/man/man1/ -rw-r--r-- root/root 1677 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/man/man1/fromdos.1.gz drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/doc/ drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/ -rw-r--r-- root/root 391 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/NEWS.Debian.gz -rw-r--r-- root/root 1406 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/copyright -rw-r--r-- root/root 5832 2011-02-27 04:25 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/tofrodos.html -rw-r--r-- root/root 3746 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/changelog.Debian.gz -rw-r--r-- root/root 5410 2011-02-27 04:25 ./usr/share/doc/tofrodos/readme.txt.gz drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/bin/ -rwxr-xr-x root/root 12792 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/bin/fromdos lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/share/man/man1/todos.1.gz -> fromdos.1.gz lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2011-10-18 10:47 ./usr/bin/todos -> fromdos
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